Conviction Leaves Questions For Russia
Updated: 1:01pm UK, Thursday 18 July 2013
By Katie Stallard, Moscow Correspondent
Alexei Navalny walked into court on Thursday knowing he would be convicted, but still with some hope that he might be going home.
He had packed his bag, he said goodbye to his children, transferred power of attorney to his wife, but he still had hope that his sentence might be suspended, that they would not really go through with sending him to prison.
"Hope dies last," he told a reporter last week.
In the small regional courtroom, Judge Blinov duly convicted him of embezzlement.
The case against him has been surreal at times, and tenuous in the extreme, but Judge Blinov has never returned a "not guilty" verdict and he saw no reason to start now.
Navalny had pleaded for clemency for his co-accused, who has five children and who he says has been caught up in this accidentally – but all to no avail.
The judge sentenced Navalny to five years in a prison camp. Pyotr Ofitserov, his supposed accomplice, was sentenced to four.
Alexei Navalny - the closest Russia has to a leader of the opposition - was arrested, handcuffed in court and led away.
Many people had predicted this might happen, but there was still real shock when it actually did.
Navalny hugged his wife, shook hands with his father and was taken from the room.
Several journalists reportedly burst into tears.
Navalny's final tweet, sent just after the sentence was passed, translates roughly as: "Don't miss me – and don't do nothing."
The real test will be what happens now.
We are told that Navalny's support doesn't extend beyond the urban elite and the young, iPad-wielding intelligentsia – if that is so then we will see limited protests in Moscow and a couple of other major cities over the next few weeks, then business as usual will be resumed.
But an interesting thing happened on the way to court on Wednesday night.
Navalny took the overnight train on the 500 mile journey north to Kirov, through the sort of rural towns outside the capital where we are assured he has no support.
But there were reports of cheering crowds meeting his train on the platform, holding banners and wearing T-shirts with his name – the sort of people we are told do not exist.
His supporters are calling people on to the streets of Moscow tonight, to gather in a square outside the walls of the Kremlin, to "discuss" the verdict.
From his Twitter account, Navalny's wife just tweeted a picture of an ageing Vladimir Putin – with Thursday's date and the location of the square - the words above, in Russian, read "God have mercy on you".
A respected Russian political analyst told me that this case would be a litmus test – a symbol of how the authorities intended to proceed.
Lilia Shevtsova, of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, said we were entering a new epoch, where the pretence at democracy would be abandoned, and the new rules of the game would be made clear.
With the imprisonment of Alexei Navalny, it seems the authorities have laid out their cards. The question is how the people respond.
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